spynotes ::
  June 02, 2006
Pictures of you

These weeks where AJ has no school or camp are tough for my computer time. Entertaining AJ has is more than a full time job. The lack of work getting done here is alarming.

AJ and I have been very busy the last couple of days. On Wednesday, AJ was making a lot of noise about going for a train ride. We�d planned to go into the city sometime this week, but the weather was looking dicey, so instead we took a train a couple of towns down the line, had lunch, and came home. It wasn�t very exciting, but AJ loved riding the train.

Yesterday, the weather looked better and we made it to the train station earlier and headed downtown. We walked from the train station to the Art Institute, stopping to stare down most of the street grates and up at the tops of buildings. We arrived at the museum shortly after it opened. After a brief tour of the outdoor sculpture garden where AJ enjoyed the noises produced by banging on a Henry Moore bronze, we headed in where AJ immediately seized on the map and drew a line with his finger showing where he wanted to go. AJ seemed a little overwhelmed by the building and uncertain of how to proceed. After dashing through several galleries without looking at much, I produced a sketchbook and colored pencils from my bag and asked if he wanted to draw. He immediately settled himself on a concrete bench and began sketching his interpretation of a pre-Cubist Picasso, �Nude with a pitcher.� Suddenly the galleries seemed to give him ideas.

I fought the temptation to show him around to things I thought he would like and spent the morning following his lead. We spent most of our time in the modern wing. He liked the abstract paintings best � he did his own version of Ellsworth Kelly�s �Red, Yellow, Blue, Black and White,� which he called �Flag Stripes.� He pretended a large Frank Stella was a racetrack with lanes to follow. He was taken with an absurdist painting (I�m sure this is not the correct term for his style � perhaps metonym can enlighten me? I know Picabia was admired by the clutch of composers who gathered around Jean Cocteau, but I don�t know much about him) by Picabia, which he termed �Silly Art.� He was similarly amused by a L�ger painting that he called �People Fighting� because of the tangle of body parts at its center. And he loved the strange juxtapositions of familiar objects in Magritte's paintings.

But he also liked some of the more realistic paintings, and seemed particularly drawn to those that drew you in with a sense of place. We played the �which is your favorite artwork in the room� game and he was inevitably drawn to paintings of mountain villages, rooftops collapsing into valleys, with interesting plays of light and shadow.

He also liked anything three-dimensional � the Brancusi that looked like a fish or perhaps a face, the small scale model of the Picasso that stands in Daley Plaza, and all ofJoseph Cornell�s boxes, particularly the ones with buttons to push to light them up. His favorite exhibit may have been the one about the museum itself � the large wood model of the museum and its addition-to-be and the park it sits in.

After we had had our fill of art, we bought a postcard for The Girl Next Door (a Japanese picture of a cat) and headed up the street to dine in the park, stopping to take off our shoes and splash in the water of the Face Fountains, along with scores of other children, some in bathing suits, and a few adults. We had lunch at the park�s caf�, where we sat in the exact center of the ice rink where we�d watched the skaters last December. We could see glimpses of The Bean through the caf� umbrellas, so after we were through, we bought some ice cream and took it up into the main park to watch the action and try to find our images on The Bean. We walked under it, pretended to hold it up, spun around and then just watched everybody else. A group of women in belly-dance costumes with finger cymbals looked as if they were about to perform. We waited, but park security sent them on their way, so we went on ours too. AJ played invisible baseball on the lawn by the bandshell and then we went in search of the miniature canal running through the Lurie Garden. We threw pennies and made wishes, smelled some flowers, and crossed the serpentine bridge to the playground by the lake.

AJ doesn�t remember the playground, but it was the very first one he ever went to. His first time in a swing was there. There were a few other little boys there too, but they mostly ignored each other in favor of their own individual games. After AJ was done, we walked back the way we had come, across the north end of the park. We stopped to look at one more fountain before depositing ourselves back on the city streets. We killed some time at the bookstore so we didn�t have to spend too much time at the train station, and bought AJ a Schoolhouse Rock DVD, as he�s been singing the Interjection song almost nonstop this week. By the time we got to the train station, we were happy to collapse into the blue vinyl seats. But AJ was still more excited than tired. He rattled on happily about his day all the way home, quieting down only long enough to draw some pictures. My favorite of this last batch of pictures was one he entitled, �What I wish I were doing right now.� The picture showed a grinning AJ peeing in the train�s bathroom, complete with an out-of-order sign on the sink.

3 people said it like they meant it

 
:: last :: next :: random :: newest :: archives ::
:: :: profile :: notes :: g-book :: email ::
::rings/links :: 100 things :: design :: host ::

(c) 2003-2007 harri3tspy

<< chicago blogs >>